Hereafter

*Originally posted April 1, 2011

Alicia and I watched the movie "Herafter" last night. When this movie first came out, a couple of people told me they thought of me when they watched it -- since I was a well-known psychic, on national television 24 hours a day, seven days a week, who walked away from being a psychic and said "no mas -- never again" for 14 years, I could relate to this and, as a result, was curious to see it . . . but immediately after it came out, lots of people in the "light worker community" started blasting this movie as denigrating psychics and so I passed on watching it, until now.

Because, for me, based on where I am now, this movie has an even greater impact than if I had watched it last year.

I see this film not as a story about psychic phenomena but instead as a love story about two people whose worlds are rocked and who, eventually, through a "divine guiding hand" come together and find each other.

Soul mates.

A psychic wunderkind not always down with sharing his gift who meets and falls instantly for a beautiful girl (from a foreign country) -- I can definitely relate.

Very few people understand the price tag that comes with this gift -- and, as a straight male in a world filled mainly with women or gay men, the challenges (and rewards) of "being a boy" are not easily understood, nor thought of, by most people.

I have had people say to me almost verbatim many of the things said to George (the psychic played by Matt Damon) . . . "You have a gift, you owe it to others to use it . . . it is who you are, you have to do it. etc etc etc". I have heard these same speeches for 25 years. And, like George, I also walked away from doing it at a time when there was plenty of money on the table for me to scoop up . . . this was long ago, when not everyone in America called themselves a psychic -- but I turned down repeated infomercials because I saw the fork in my road bending in a very dramatic way. And the price tag, for me then, was losing out on being a father to my one year old daughter and so: "psychic rock star" or "father" were the choices I saw (and I didn't see them happening together) -- and I, of course, chose "father".

After making this "choice", I went "underground" and DID NOT like it when people recognized me -- because in the early '90's they did . . . for fear that it would "blow my cover". In this case, I identify more with the French journalist who saw her professional reputation, and career, suffer when she talked openly about her feelings about God and spirituality.

And then, there is the "relationship thing" . . . more people probably wanted pyrotechnics of the afterlife and buzzing space ships filled with angels scooping up lost souls as they passed, a battle of light and dark . . . an action movie. This was directed, after all, by Clint Eastwood.

But I understood it as a movie about someone who was lonely, who wanted to be loved. And was trying desperately to find it.

I have seen relationships crumble because "I knew things". Girls who were attracted to me, who didn't know about my "gift", sometimes freaked and split. Others came on to me BECAUSE I was psychic and so, for me anyway, it had the very obvious benefit of allowing me the opportunity to attract lots and lots of girls, at the same time ruining the long-term potential of almost all of them.

An interesting, and puzzling, dilemma. One that I solved, as George solved, by going within and turning the volume down.

To find himself, and to find love, he had to go a different path.

I loved this movie. It is not for everyone, but if you think of this film as a love story and not a "psychic story" I think you may have a new appreciation for the beauty of this film.